


Love Your Ground

by bumblefuck



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-05
Updated: 2010-10-05
Packaged: 2017-10-12 10:33:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/123971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bumblefuck/pseuds/bumblefuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is what makes a family. Nate and Walt decide to adopt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Your Ground

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Things Worth Trying For](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/1593) by anamie_me. 



When Nate and Walt come out together, it's to everyone's surprise. Not, as you would think, because they're coming out – Brad and Ray pretty much had the market cornered on surprise homosexuality – but because they're _together._

"Walt," Ray says, at the park where they've convened to discuss these momentous happenings (Brad and Ray have Eli with them, and so are unable to go into any bars), "does this mean all that time in Iraq when I thought you were making eyes at _me_ , you were actually looking past me to the cocksucking lips of our fearless leader here? I thought what we had was special!" He looks so _wounded_ that Walt almost feels bad for him, but then Nate's arm slides around his waist and Brad smacks Ray on the back of the head and the feeling passes.

"Sorry, Ray," Walt says instead, "but I need someone who doesn't think a discussion about NASCAR counts as dirty talk."

Ray snorts. "Oh, sure. Take your classy liberal boyfriend then, Hasser. Motherfucking Iraq turns everyone gay." He stomps off with Eli to the swings.

Nate and Walt just look at Brad, who shrugs and looks uncomfortable, until Ray yells for Walt to come play with his daughter or he'll never get any practice for a kid of his own. Then it's Walt and Nate's turn to look uncomfortable, and Walt escapes to the playground.

"So," Nate says that night when they're sticky and sweaty and Walt's lying boneless over his chest, Nate idly stroking up and down his back with those long fingers, "I was thinking..."

Walt props himself up on one hand and looks down into Nate's eyes. "Yeah?" he says, a little warily because Nate had been talking to Brad earlier and now he probably wants to go mountain climbing with a broken foot or something.

Brad is a bad influence, Walt's decided.

"Yeah," Nate says. "About something Ray said..." and Walt doesn't hear the next bit because now Nate's taking advice from _Ray_ and now he might be a little afraid for his life "...and is that something you'd want?" he tunes back in in time to hear.

"Um. What?" he says, and Nate sighs.

"A child. Do you want children?" Nate repeats. Walt almost goes weak with relief.

"Oh, is that all?" he says. "I thought, when you said you'd been listening to Ray..." He mock-shudders and Nate chuckles. "Sure. But you'd better carry it; I don't want to lose my girlish figure."

"I was thinking we'd adopt, actually," Nate says, and Walt shrugs and rests his head back on Nate's shoulder.

"Yeah okay," he says, and he feels Nate's smile in the movement of his jaw.

It takes a while, because the state is leery of entrusting a child to anyone who doesn't fit their image of the perfect nuclear (heterosexual) family and so they have to try several different channels, but one day they come home with a real, live baby.

He's tiny and perfect and they name him James, which Ray tells them is the most boring name ever and they should have called him something crazy like celebrities do, like Pineapple, or Jalapeno and Cheese.

"Brad would like that," he says.

Nate tells Ray very slowly and firmly, as if he were speaking to a small child, that under no circumstances will they be naming their child after a food, but that doesn't stop Ray from leaving supermarket catalogues with various produce items circled whenever he visits them.

It's kind of amusing because Nate seems even more freaked out than Walt, at the start, worrying that he'll be working too much and their child will think he doesn't love him enough and all kinds of safety concerns like what if James dies because they feed him something he's allergic to or he hits his head on something and holy crap they have a _baby._

Walt just worries, very quietly, that he won't be _enough._ That James needs more love than Walt can provide, or that he'll have problems Walt can't help him with, or that he'll need someone who hasn't seen the things Walt saw in the Marines.

Nate finds him in James' room one night, just looking into the crib as James sleeps, coming up next to him to just stand for a while, hand next to Walt's on the side of the crib.

"We'll be okay, right?" Walt asks very quietly. "I mean, he's not going to grow up all fucked up because we're his parents."

"He'll be perfect no matter how he grows up," Nate tells him, and their hands inch closer until they touch.

They still worry, after that, but somehow it seems more manageable.

When they introduce James to Eli, it's almost a disaster.

James takes one look at his new playmate, throws his juicebox on the floor, and starts to cry, which sets Eli off too and the house is filled with the sound of screaming babies. Walt and Brad pick up their respective offspring, cooing until them until they quieten, while Ray takes the opportunity to laugh at Nate.

"And everyone thought _our_ child would be the badly behaved one!" Ray says triumphantly, grinning until Nate gives him a look.

"Hey, Eli," Brad's saying, and they stop and turn to watch as he slowly approaches Walt where he's standing with James, "this is James. He's going to be your friend, okay?"

The two babies inspect each other with a seriousness that makes Nate want to laugh and Ray actually do so, before James reaches out a hand to clumsily pat Eli's face, and she giggles.

The four Marines breathe a sigh of relief.

"If your son tries anything with my daughter, he'll have me to deal with," Brad tells Nate later, and Nate laughs.

"They're only young, Brad. And I think if your _daughter_ tries anything, it will not end well. For you," Nate replies.

"Seriously?" Walt says, eyebrows raised. "You realise they're _babies._ You're threatening _babies."_

"I think what young Walter here means to say is that we won't have anything to worry about until they're at least teenagers," Ray says, and they all glare at him.

"What?" he says, hands raised, and then Eli laughs and they turn to watch where she and James are building something out of blocks that looks like a mess but is obviously terribly amusing to both of them.

Nate's hand comes up to rest on Walt's shoulder and Brad and Ray shift closer together, and they watch their children play.


End file.
